How to automate expense management in Akaunting

Key takeaways

• Akaunting is free, open source accounting for small businesses and freelancers, run in the cloud or self-hosted.
• Core Akaunting covers bills, payments, categories and reconciliation; claims, receipts and bank feeds come as apps on higher plans.
• Spend is coded to categories, and to double-entry accounts with the Double-Entry app.
• Vergo proposes categories, texts for receipts and posts coded transactions through Akaunting's API.

Where should you go next?

• Vergo's Akaunting integration
• What expense management software integrates with Akaunting?
• Get started with Vergo

How do you automate expense management in Akaunting, step by step?

1. Connect Akaunting. Vergo connects through Akaunting's REST API, reads your accounts, categories and contacts, and posts coded card spend as transactions through Akaunting's API. It is self-serve.
2. Connect your cards. Connecting your existing cards involves no card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. Collect receipts by text. Employees handle everything by text message — no app to download, no portal login — and Vergo chases missing receipts itself instead of waiting for a report.
4. Propose the category. Vergo suggests the Akaunting category and account for each line, with the reason.
5. Hand off to Akaunting. Confirmed spend is posted as transactions, with vendor bills as documents where needed.

What does Akaunting need on each card purchase?

• Category: the expense category it belongs to.
• Account: the bank or card account it was paid from.
• Contact: the vendor.
• Receipt: attached to the record.

Where does Akaunting stop and automation start?

Akaunting's modular approach lets a small business add only what it needs: the Receipts app reads receipts through an OCR provider you connect, and the Bank Feeds app imports transactions. Picking the category and getting the receipt from whoever made the purchase are still manual. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought, not just the vendor name on the header.

A practical example

A two-location coffee roaster on Akaunting gives cards to both shop managers. One buys milk, cleaning supplies and a replacement grinder burr on one receipt. Vergo texts for the photo, proposes cost of goods for the milk, cleaning for the supplies and equipment repairs for the burr, and the owner confirms. Akaunting receives transactions coded to the right categories.

How Vergo handles this

Vergo proposes the coding by inference from your own accounting structure and history — no rule library to build, no keyword lists to maintain, and new vendors are coded on first sight. For Akaunting that means your own categories and chart. Card spend, employee reimbursements and AP invoices run through one coding model — same coding, same review, one reconciliation — and payment stays on the rails you already use.